Be very wary about this banding and school league tables. They are not there to enhance the education of our children, but to make the figures look good for the government and the schools themselves.

Other countries do not have such tables or banding, so it seems to be something perculiar to Britain. As we know, successive governments love to blind us with figures and statistics that are totally meaningless, and only serve to make themselves look good in the face of criticism.

They can throw their figures at us to show what a great job they're doing, when the reality is that employers even now are complaining about the standards of literacy and numeracy of school leavers.

I give these figures no credence whatsoever when they're published. I worked in a university, and I saw for myself the standards of even A Level students leaving much to be desired. So I always ask myself when I see the bandings, or when I pass a school that has a banner outside the gates proclaiming its academic achievments, how well can your students write and calculate even the most basic of exercises. Never mind your figuers, what is the actual reality behind them?

This is not to denigrate the students, because they are no different to the generations that went before them, who as far as I can see did have high standards of literacy and numeracy. This is a reflection on a system that places greater score on statistics and blind figures to conceal that the kids are being let down badly, and the teachers too, who are forced to follow a system that treats learning as a robotic exercise, almost like a production line of passing on knowledge.

Or, even worse, that those who set the standards and award the prizes, don't know themselves that the standards have fallen so badly that smokesecreens like these have to be used to blind even them to the truth.

If any dispute my ramblings then take a look at the blogs and the posts on threads on Yahoo, or any other sites where comments are placed, and see for yourself the standards of literacy that results from an education sysytem that claims to have spent more than ever before. Where has the money gone?